He said: ‘It is wholly my decision. After 11 years on the board of this bank and seven years as finance director it seems a natural time to step away.’

Meddings had been tipped as a front-runner to succeed chief executive Peter Sands, but was last month stripped of responsibility for risk oversight, due to
concerns expressed by Britain's financial regulator.

Sources
said the regulator was concerned about StanChart's combination of risk
and finance roles, rather than any issues with Meddings himself.

Meddings will be followed out the door by Steve Bertamini, head of consumer banking, who will also leave the bank.

Both of these departures come just a month after StanChart warned its 10-year record of earnings growth would likely end in 2013.

As speculation mounts over any hidden reason behind Meddings shock exit, the chief executive of StanChart denied there had been any disagreement among board members over the bank's capital strength and dismissed speculation that the bank could be forced to raise funds from shareholders.

‘We remain very comfortable with our capital position and have no plans (for a rights issue of new stock).

‘We have a unified board which is fully behind the strategy and has been fully involved in the organisational changes which we've announced today,’ Sands added.

However, there will also be other changes. The bank will combine its wholesale and consumer banking operations into one business from the start of April.

New role: Mike Rees, wholesale banking chief at Standard Chartered Bank is being promoted to a new role running wholesale and consumer banking and becomes deputy chief executive

Mike Rees, head of wholesale banking, is being promoted to a new role running wholesale and consumer banking and becomes deputy chief executive.

The chief executive said the move would help the bank ‘deliver both productivity gains and improvements in the quality of the service and products we offer our customers’.

He said more changes would take place in support and control functions as they adapt to the reshaping of the business and regions.

However, the departure of the long standing finance director left StanChart's London-listed shares down 40.5 pence or 3 per cent by 1107 GMT.

Since April, the stock had lost a quarter of its value compared with a 30 per cent rise in the European banking sector.

The London-based bank makes more than three-quarters of its profits in Asia, Africa and the Middle East, which helped it come through the 2008 financial crisis relatively unscathed and made it a stock-market favourite because of its exposure to faster growth in those emerging markets.

The bank had a core capital ratio of
11.4 per cent at the end of June against a UK regulatory requirement of a
minimum 7 per cent.

Yet after a decade of sustained growth, it has hit a rocky patch and said in December its earnings had been hit by big losses in Korea, a slowdown in its key Asian markets and tougher regulations.

Ian Gordon, analyst at brokerage Investec, said the decline in StanChart shares was ‘predictable given the speculation you've had around capital-raising issues.’

He said the departure gave fresh ammunition to anyone with a negative view of the stock, though he said capital-raising concerns were overdone.

‘Standard Chartered doesn't need any capital. It starts from the position of having the strongest capital ratio in the market,’ Gordon said.

‘This is an undervalued franchise with a strong re-acceleration of growth in 2014 which isn't currently reflected in the share price.’